Sunday, November 25, 2012

Black and White Cliff House

The framed photo of Mabel Watson Payne (taken about a year ago) was watching me while I got ready Sunday morning to meet her and her parents and her grandmother for brunch at the Cliff House, a very welcome Thanksgiving-weekend get-together, now that their travels are happily, safely concluded.

We arrived early, with the fog still surrounding everything. This is a popular place to bring out of town guests because the views from the dining room are amazing, and we knew it would be crowded later.

Mabel needed to visit each of the bronze starfish and octopuses installed to prevent skateboarding on the steps and ledges that descend to the restaurant.

We had a corner table. Mabel faced a vast window overlooking Ocean Beach, with the restored windmill in Golden Gate Park just visible at the extreme left below. It is the object the adults are pointing out, until Mabel too can spot it.

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

"My first initiation into the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans Gallery: it was there that I formed my taste, such as it is: so that I am irreclaimably of the old school of painting. I was staggered when I saw the works there collected and looked at them with wondering and longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. . . . Old Time had unlocked her treasures, and Fame stood portress at the door. We had heard the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Carracci: – but to see them face to face, to be in the same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some mighty spell – was almost an effect of necromancy."